The awesome guys at Future Insights invited Awwwards to attend Future of Web Design 2013, which took place last week in London, as media partners. Our Community Manager Martha went along, had a great time and brought back some of the highlights to share with all of you.

Attendees at Future of Web Design received the usual warm welcome from the Future Insights team as we arrived at East London’s The Brewery, ready to enjoy a couple of days of cutting-edge learning and inspiration.

Seb Lee Delisle saw in the conference with a bit of live coding to rouse an initially subdued crowd. Following on from Seb, Mike Kus made some useful points on “the Inception and Evolution of Ideas” in a talk that left plenty of space for reflection and was somehow beautifully relaxing, like being in a mental cocoon. Among the best advice to take away was the importance of acting on good ideas immediately (or you might never do it).

Mike Kus

Shifting the focus from inception to perception, Joe Leech was very interesting on Psychology for Designers (on which he has recently published a book). He discussed how our “mental models” (our assumptions about how things work in the real world) influence our experiences online and how an understanding of psychology can help designers create better experiences for their users. Slides from his talk can be viewed here.

UX Panel Session

We came back after lunch to a dynamic UX Panel Session, which struck a happy balance of personalities between the calm and collected Dave Ellender and Steph Troeth, and the more boisterous Paul and Joe. Talk of breasts aside, there were some valuable insights to be gained, including a surprising division of opinions on Lorem Ipsum.

On Day Two, Clare Sutcliffe introduced Code Club, her incredibly great program for teaching kids to code. Many people will be very happy that she and Linda Sandvik have put a system in place for people to do this, while maybe also wondering how it took so long for somebody to get around to.

Clare Sutcliffe

In the afternoon, Paul Boag was forthright and entertaining as ever. His talk this year was called “Change your Company, Change your Client’s Business”. Paul is so enjoyable to listen to it almost doesn’t matter what he says, but he talked good sense. The key thing I took from his session was that if we want to persuade our clients/ organizations to do things our way, we need to start speaking to them in their own language- even if that does mean trying to sound knowledgeable about “Key Performance Indicators”.

Paul Boag

Also well worth checking out were:

· Addy Osmani on rendering with case studies of Pinterest and (Awwwards Site of the Day) Blast Radius’s Air Jordan 2012

· Matt Gifford on why we redesign (28% out of boredom, and 10% weren’t happy with their last redesign)

· Steph Troeth on how to ask the right questions to get the answers you need in UX research.

· Lea Verou, who closed the show with an exploration of the possibilities of border radius.

· I heard good things about the workshops run by Joe Leech & Dave Ellender, Addy Osmani, Jim Kidwell and Peter Gasston the day before the conference proper.

· The Graffiti wall was a nice addition to this year’s event. It was fun to check out what people had added in each break between sessions.